One Brief Shining Moment
by lilacmermaid33
Summary: Will/Mackenzie, post - 1x10. After their show one night, Will receives a very surprising email.


It was late at night, and Will McAvoy was going through his usual post-show routine – a blistering hot shower, a midnight snack, a quick perusal of the headlines, before turning in for the night.

Thursday, September 1st, 2011. It had been a slow day in the newsroom, with the never-ending conflicts in Libya and Syria and the endless series of hurricanes, tropical storms and wildfires the only major stories of the day, allowing them to dedicate more of the hour to a discussion of the economy.

Will was about to close his laptop when, almost by instinct, he clicked on the link to the _Help Me, Rhonda_ website, which he had bookmarked all those months ago. He hadn't visited the website since before his stay in the hospital, and as he waited for the page to load, he thought better of it now. He was feeling surprisingly good tonight, all things considered, and consulting Rhonda now would only bring him down.

It had been more than three weeks since Will's triumphant return to the airwaves, and things were so much easier in the newsroom these days. It helped that Brian Brenner was finally gone from their midst. And the end of the TMI scandal meant that they no longer had to keep a wary eye over their shoulders to see what Leona and Reese Lansing were up to, though they were under no delusion that matters with Reese were over for good.

Those factors all helped tremendously, but the real difference, Will admitted, was the relationship between himself and Mackenzie. No longer perpetually at each other's throats, the tensions between them had finally, finally eased. It was incredible the work they could get accomplished when they weren't trying to kill each other.

She hadn't heard the voicemail. Will shook his head, still in awe of this fact. No matter how many times he reminded himself of it, he still didn't know what to make of it. He hadn't mentioned it to Dr. Habib in any of their sessions yet, but he knew he wouldn't be able to keep it to himself much longer. Will may not have figured out a way to forgive Mac yet, but he could, at least, admit to himself now that he wanted to, more than anything in the world. He just didn't know where to start. In the meantime, he had lost all desire to punish her any more, and that alone made them both so much more pleasant to be around.

For the first few days after they branded the Tea Party as the American Taliban, Mac had badgered him to tell her what the rest of the voicemail said. By the shy, hopeful smile on her face whenever she brought it up, Will could tell that she had gleaned the general idea, but that didn't make it any easier to give her what she wanted. Being high that night hadn't made him say anything he didn't _mean_, but it did make him confess something he had never intended for her to _hear_. All this time, all these long months of believing that she didn't return his feelings, and it wasn't true. He simply couldn't process it.

By the following week, however, Mac had let the matter drop entirely, a move so out of character that Will had almost wanted to bring it up again himself, just to see what she would do. He hadn't done it, though, and in the weeks since then, Mac had been keeping conspicuously to herself. She was doing her job just as efficiently as ever, but any moment that she didn't need to be in the thick of things, she would retreat to her office, pulling the door closed behind her. In the conference room and the control room, Mac was leaving him almost entirely alone, and Will was surprised to find that he missed her constant teasing and nagging. Will didn't know how to bring this change up with her, without returning to the strained relations they had finally escaped, and so he had been letting it go.

Today, however, Mac had swept into the conference room at the last minute, without even looking at him, and her instructions into his earpiece that evening had been fewer and farther between than ever. She escaped the building before he had even finished changing. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, he would have to talk to her about this.

Will sighed tiredly. He moved to close his laptop once more and go to bed, when a pinging sound announced that he had an email waiting for him. A second later, a little window appeared in the corner of the screen.

**From: Mackenzie McHale**

**Subject: [No Subject]**

Perhaps he wouldn't have to wait until tomorrow after all. Will's mouth quirked upward in a small smile. In all the years he had known her, Mac had never filled in the subject line of an email. She was always in too much of a hurry to send it out, her fingers flying over the keys and hitting send, not even reading her message over for errors. This impatience had gotten her in trouble on some memorable occasions, and for days or weeks afterwards she would be too gun-shy to send an email at all, reaching for the telephone instead, but she always settled back into her old habits sooner or later.

Will clicked on the email, opening it, but the resulting window left him more puzzled than ever. There was no message at all, merely an attachment, an audio file simply called "Me". Curious, Will clicked on the file, pressing play when it loaded.

_Before I gaze at you again,_

_I'll need a time for tears._

_Before I gaze at you again,_

_Let hours turn to years._

_I have so much forgetting to do_

_Before I try to gaze again at you._

Will pressed the pause button halfway through the song, sitting there in utterly dumbfounded motionlessness. Before the third word had faded, Will had identified the song – _Before I Gaze At You Again_, a love song from Camelot. Guinevere sings to herself about Lancelot, as she struggles not to fall in love with him, and to remain faithful to Arthur.

It was _Mac_ singing the song.

When he could move again, Will pinched himself, just to make sure he wasn't dreaming. Nothing about this made any sense. Will reached for his phone, his fingers quickly finding the first number in his address book.

"Mac? I just got your email. What's going on?" he asked, trying to keep the worry out of his voice. _What was this?_

"We're Camelot," whimpered Mac, her voice quavering dangerously.

Will's heart sank. Throughout the course of any given day – any given hour – Mac's emotions might range from fury to frustration to girlish delight and back again, but the only time tears ever factored into the equation was when she had a _lot_ of alcohol in her system. Whatever this was, it wasn't going to be good.

"I know I said I thought Brian could be the boy at the end of the story," Will said cautiously, trying to get her to calm down. "But I was wrong. It turned out to be the intern, Jennifer, remember?"

"No, not just the ending," she said, crying openly now. "It's the whole thing. Why did you let me keep going with the whole stupid Don Quixote metaphor when we've been Camelot all along?"

"Mac, where are you going with this?" Will asked gently, wishing she was here instead of on the other end of the phone. They could always work these things out better when they were face to face, reading each other's visual cues.

"You're King Arthur. Our show is Camelot."

"Okay," he said slowly. "So—"

"So then I'm Guinevere," she wept.

_Oh, Mackenzie_. "Mac, no," Will rushed to reassure her, but she wasn't listening.

"Guinevere was so stupid," she cried. "Lancelot wasn't even worth it. And Arthur forgives them!"

Again and again, Will tried to interject, but nothing he said could penetrate her teary meltdown, and every excoriating word hit him squarely in the chest. _This was never what he meant._

"She should come crawling back to Arthur after the curtain drops," Mac rambled. "It should be Arthur singing this song to her, only he's not moronic enough to take her back. That's how Camelot should have ended."

"Mackenzie, please, stop this," Will begged.

"Guinevere should have just stayed in Camelot where she belonged," Mac finished, her words breaking off into heartbroken sobs.

Will took a deep breath, running a hand through his hair. "Mac, where are you right now?" he asked, when it was clear that she had run out of things to say. "Are you at home? Are you alone?"

"Yeah," she replied, gulping as she tried to get her crying under control.

"Okay, good," he said, breathing a little easier. "Can you put the wine away for me?"

"I don't want to," Mac whimpered. "Today always hurts too much."

"I know," he said sadly, his heart clenching painfully. "I know it does."

September 1, 2006. The day that Mac had confessed everything, the day that his whole world had fallen apart after two deliriously happy years. The date was burned into his memory, along with every other moment of their time together. Clearly he should have given her more credit – he never realized that Mac remembered this anniversary too.

"I know," Will repeated, bringing his musings back to the present. Mackenzie needed him to stayed focused right now. "But you know that drinking won't make it any easier, you'll just feel sick in the morning."

"I know," Mac sobbed.

He listened to her cry for a moment, his heart breaking with every sob. When he was sure that she would be able to hear him again, he spoke. "I'm going to stay on the phone with you while you put it away and get into bed, okay?"

There was a pause, followed by a last gulping sob. "Okay," Mac whimpered at last.

Will pressed the phone closer to his ear, straining to hear every muffled and muted sound. He closed his eyes, using only the thuds and clanks to try to visualize her movements around her apartment. Eventually the noises stopped, and he could hear Mac picking up the phone once more.

"Will?" she whispered, like she was afraid he might have given up on her and hung up.

"I'm still here," he said firmly. "Are you in bed?"

"Yeah," she replied, sniffling.

"Good. Try to get some sleep, okay?" Will said.

"I'm just – I'm so sorry about everything," Mac said, whimpering once more.

"I know," Will said. "Try not to think about it any more tonight, okay? I'll see you in the morning."

"Okay," Mac said.

Will waited until he heard the dial tone before terminating the call on his end. Then he remained sitting there with the phone in his hand, not moving, for a long time.

It was _so_ painful, hearing her like this. He knew he had been hurting her, with Brian, with the jibes, with the endless stream of girlfriends parading through the newsroom. He _knew_ it, but he hadn't had to hear it until now, and he would give anything never to have to hear it again.

The thing was, he hadn't even meant it this way. Yes, he had been the one to bring up Camelot. He really did see things that way: the show they had managed to build was like something out of a fairy tale. The knowledge that it wasn't going to last forever, the desire to have people know and talk about and remember what they had been trying to do? That was all Camelot. He might even have cast himself, subconsciously, as King Arthur, the founder of it all.

But never, not once in all the time he had orchestrated Brian's article, had he cast Mackenzie in the role of Guinevere, betraying Arthur with Lancelot, and it killed him to realize that that's what she thought.

Because he couldn't help torturing himself a little, Will clicked on the recording again, this time listening to it all the way through, his face buried in his hands..

_Stay away until you cross my mind_

_Barely once a day._

_Stay away until I wake and find_

_That I can smile and say:_

_That I shall gaze at you again_

_Without a blush or qualm._

_My eyes will shine like new again,_

_My manner poised and calm._

_No sign of fear,_

_Not even a sigh._

_And so till when we meet again,_

_Goodbye!_

Mac had _never_ let him hear her sing before. She loved to sing, he knew, but she refused, blushing profusely, whenever he asked her. Often, she couldn't stop herself from humming when she washed dishes or folded laundry, but she always clammed up, mortified, the minute she realized he was back in the apartment. Listening to her now, he wished he had pushed harder – Mackenzie was _good_. She would never have a career on Broadway, but she was solid, and the heartfelt emotion that she poured into this song more than made up for her lack of power.

He hadn't even realized she knew Camelot, beyond their brief conversations in the hospital and the conference room. And the thing was, this couldn't have just been some drunken mistake. She _knew_ the song. He knew Mac, and though he had goaded her, saying that he found it difficult to predict what she would do, he could say with absolute certainty what had happened here. Mac had gone out, rented the movie and bought the original Broadway recording just after he was released from the hospital. She had been listening to it and obsessing over it ever since, driving herself mad.

He may not see her as Guinevere, but her analysis of the song was spot on. Those lyrics couldn't fit them better if it had been written for them. She understood him perfectly, just as he understood her.

Will sighed deeply and shut his laptop at last, heading into his bedroom, though he knew that sleep would be long in coming tonight.

**AUTHOR'S NOTE**:

As always, thank you so much for reading! I really appreciate any comments and constructive criticism, I'd love to know what you think! Bonus points to anyone who knows where the title comes from!

This is absolutely a one-shot, at least, on my end. I have an idea where the next day starts, but no idea where it goes beyond that. If anyone out there might be interested in taking it on, please let me know!


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